


L'Chaim

by speakpirate



Category: Transparent (TV)
Genre: Bring Them Back Fic Challenge, Character Study, Gen, WWII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 20:10:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7984609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakpirate/pseuds/speakpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There is nowhere to go.  But they must go somewhere.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She thinks of Rose and her mother, perhaps already on their way to a ship.  The false passport, a lie in more ways than one.</i>
</p>
<p>A story of Gittel's survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	L'Chaim

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Bring_Them_Back_Fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bring_Them_Back_Fic/pseuds/Bring_Them_Back_Fic) in the [Bring_Them_Back_Fic_Television](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Bring_Them_Back_Fic_Television) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Character: Gittel
> 
> Cause of Death: Chooses to stay in Berlin
> 
> Write a story where Gittel lives.

Gittel wanders through the halls of the Institute, dazed but defiant. Magnus has escaped, but the books, the papers, the work - all turned to ash in the streets.

There is nowhere to go. But how many nights will it be until they come for human flesh to throw upon their fires? She has other jewelry. A gold necklace, a bracelet, some other trinkets. Gifts from the wealthy men who came through as tourists, indulging in the liberties and the freedoms of Berlin, drinking cocktails in fancy dresses and praising the doctor’s research.

She thinks of Rose and her mother, perhaps already on their way to a ship. The false passport, a lie in more ways than one.

She gathers up all those who are left. Coordinates a search through the rubble for any volumes that may have survived. They pack trunks and satchels. It is not just the research that is scattered to the winds, it is the people, the community. They melt away into the shadows, to blend in, to make their own plans. Seven are left. Seven, where there used to be a hundred. Empty rooms where there used to be a waiting list of those who wished to come and stay.

A message arrives from Magnus. He is safe. A speaking tour awaits him. 

_We have always been exiles the convention and conformity. We must now be exiles from our country._

\--------

Gittel sells her bracelet. The man at the shop offers her a third of its value. She thanks him.

She purchases tickets for the morning train to Paris. 

Brand refuses to join them. He will stay. This is his home. He is too old to start again. 

He is not a Jew.

She kisses him on the cheek. He presses a gold watch into her hand. 

_Because I am almost out of time. But you are not._

\---------

The train is packed, Gittel can barely see Berlin out the windows as it pulls out of the station. The windows are foggy and streaked with soot. The inside of the car is blurry, too. But that is because of her tears.

There is trouble near Duisburg. A pack of young men, barely old enough to shave, wearing swastika patches on their arms. The Hitler Youth. One of them kicks an old lady out of her seat, spills her market bag on purpose. 

Johannes gives him a disgusted look.

This is all it takes for their shiny black boots to surround him, to kick him to his knees, to taunt him as a faggot and try to yank down his pants.

Gittel and Angela and Franz try to intervene. 

The conductor doesn’t say a word. 

He kicks the four of them off the train at the next station, the old woman and her groceries with them.

Rosenberg and Emil sit with their eyes frozen forward. They stay on the train with the trunks.

Gittel watches it until the last car is out of sight down the tracks. 

They are 31 miles from the border. 

From the Netherlands. 

They will walk.

\---------

They stagger across the border at dawn. Collapse into sleep in a field outside of Venlo. 

A farmer finds them, offers them food.

The next day, he drives them in his wagon to Venlo. 

To the Jewish area.

Franz makes friends easily. He gets a job in a coffee house.

He will stay in Venlo. Wait for the political situation to stabilize at home.

One of his new friends has a wealthy father. A father with a car. 

He drives them to Antwerp.

Belgium.

\---------

The man who runs the Den Botanik is an old friend of Magnus. He visited the Institute once or twice, but never for long. 

His orangeries needed him. 

The fruit never ripened as well if he was not there to tend its branches.

Johannes finds work at the University. 

Angela waits tables.

Gittel sings in a nightclub.

The three of them share a small cottage on the grounds of the gardens.

Strangers in a strange land.

\----------

Years pass in relative peace, though the shadow of Hitler still looms.

One morning, a gardener leaves the glass door of the orangery open on a winter night.

The trees die from the frost.

Their benefactor dies a week later of a broken heart.

The new director tells them they will have to find new lodgings.

\------------

Johannes gets a room near the University.

Gittel knows a man from the club. A Viscount. A Viscount with a chateau.

He whisks them off to Bordeaux.

France.

\-------------

The chateau is a crumbling gothic work of art. 

He apologizes for the uneven floors, the drafty leaded windows.

They are a thousand miles from Berlin.

They will perhaps be safe here.

\--------------

Angela falls in love. The woman owns a neighboring farm. A young widow who does chores with her hair swept up in an elegant twist. 

Louis is in London on the spring of 1940, when the first stream of refugees starts pouring down the road from Paris. The German tanks are rolling across the French countryside. 

Angela refuses to leave France. She and Jeanne will stay. If the government has capitulated, they will fight. Resist. Cut the power lines. Line the road with barbed wire.

_They have pushed me this far. No farther._

Angela gives her a bicycle and a knapsack full of fresh baked bread. Gittel gathers her belongings again. She pedals on her strong legs to the Spanish border.

\----------

She sells the bicycle and buys a train ticket to Lisbon.

There is no one else left. 

She is alone in the large world.

She thinks of her sister Rose in America.

Wonders if she has settled in. Found a nice man to marry.

Their mother wouldn’t have it any other way.

She sells her gold necklace for a good price.

Books passage on a ship bound for Rio de Janeiro.

She stands at the railing watching the shoreline of Europe recede.

She is not afraid. 

She has already lived more than one life.


End file.
